Ronan in TRK, at the Barns

Oh man, I just reread this part about the one old tree being unmade and I remember how a reader told me in a signing line that it reminded her of her mother dying from cancer years before and now I AM THE UNMADE ONE AGAIN

It's really not fair to Lloyd Alexander, one of the formative authors of my childhood, but every time I described Artemus' appearance, I was really just describing him.

Dinner break

Why does this host body eat so much

I'm back and now Blue's father is in a tree so that's where we're at

Meanwhile Adam's doing this sort of extended 'I can see my house from here but by house I mean Ronan' chapter

"Good save, point to the Ganseys, win for Team Good Feeling."

I wrote this chapter about Helen finding out about Gansey bribing Child for Ronan's diploma at a service area on the Pennsylvania turnpike. It was very cold and very dark and my shirt had thumbholes which felt very important at the time.

Except this part, which is the part I wrote first, pulling over on I-64 to type it on my phone so I'd remember it for later.

A lot of the corruption sequences in this book were simply from my own nightmares; I have a lot of them. Horror and magic, remember?

Except in my dream it was my own hands I was eating.

While I was writing these sequences of Cabeswater being unmade, the Cabeswater I can see from my house was also being unmade: the mountains caught fire that year. It was an eerie horizon as I wrote, the sharp edge of the horizon searing in the dark as I destroyed it in writing.

no Ronan I changed my mind DON'T FOLLOW ORPHAN GIRL IN THIS CHAPTER GO BACK WITH ADAM

OH I AM SUCH AN AWFUL HUMAN

well that chapter was gross

"Back then he'd strung one gray day into another, and it seemed likely that he had lost weeks or months to this foggy dissociation."

Same, Gray Man, same

What an acceptable amount of angst there is on page 316.

Blue and her tree lineage have been around since . . . well, I'm ancient now, so I guess nearly twenty years? As a kid who couldn't stop imagining what life was like if you were a tree, it was a pretty appealing thought exercise.

I used to think about what it was like to live on such a longer time line, to move your thoughts instead of your limbs. And as a kid who wasn't particularly attached to her body, the idea of trying on others was enchanting.

And I guess, like Artemus, I've never been a fan of places "for all the things that trees could be except for alive."

same, Artemus, same

Find yourself a man who sleeps in the car with you when you're in a vacant state of pre-processing the horror show of your life

find yourself a girl who is a tree, or a tree who is a girl, find yourself one who can do both

yes, creepyGanseyNoah, yes, become one

"The head is too wise. The heart is all fire."

This is where Gansey thinks his story has arced to, and he's not wrong, it's just that it isn't yet the end. He knows now, though, one thing he's gotten wrong forever: true privilege means you can choose to have no agency and stay childlike for a long time.

You can choose to let other people make decisions for you, because you can only get hurt so badly when you are loved and needed by your family and society. You can choose to ignore fixing yourself by chasing magic and tilting windmills, because the bills are paid.

You can choose, even, to believe that your words and intentions can stay clumsy and unsophisticated, because in the end, it won't keep you friendless and alone, not if every other privileged marker is in line.

Gansey has hidden from adulthood and responsibility while looking the most adult and responsible of all of them, and that's what he finally has come to terms with here. He is not just a king, he is no longer a kid.

And most importantly, he realizes that he has been untrue. He hasn't found anything because he never wanted to find anything. He wanted to quest forever. Game's over.

Purely for research purposes I took the various roads Gansey and Henry took pursuing the birds to see which were most acceptable for driving at speed at night.

Oh, man, it is weird to read this chapter at night in the chair I wrote this chapter in at night.

A realtor once showed us the house that the birds take Gansey and Henry too. They told me it was great for entertaining. It is true that I was entertained.

CALL DOWN THE HAWK (Scholastic, 2019)

See, Gansey, it was never about you dying and coming back, you were headed for this character arc no matter how you got there.

Oh, man, it was, like, 3 am in the morning when I was writing this scene with Gansey looking into the woods where he died and I remember it like it was last night.

I knew I was looking at the end of a series that I had been planning since I pitched it to Scholastic in 2011, but I also knew I was looking at the end of a character I had begun writing two decades before.

One of the oldest of my daydreamed scenes, and I had been getting closer and closer to it all this time, just like Gansey and Glendower, and like Gansey, I had to ask myself if I actually ever wanted it to be over, or if the point had always been the questing.

YES HENRY GIVE HIM YOUR SWEATER

*rubs hands*

same, Gansey, same

can we get some mood music in here https://soundcloud.com/son-lux/no-fate-awaits-me-feat-faux-fix

THE POWER OF INTENTION:

GANSEY: something beautiful! something noble!
*ronan manifests*
RONAN: you dumb shit

And to think the poor idiot now thinks THIS is the end of his arc

"Adam just looked at it, his hands clasped together as if they were cold"

yes I'm sure they are just cold and definitely not possessed, it will be fine, go ON

ok seriously I'm about to spoil the whole book

the whole series, like, look away, I'm serious for serious

I was so sure that no reader would be surprised by this revelation, because it seemed so obvious to me. There could be no Santa Claus in this story. No pot of gold guarded by leprechauns. No last minute deus ex machina popping from a tomb.

This was always a series about teens becoming heroes, not teens becoming excavators of heroes.

So Glendower always had to be dead, or he had to be evil, and surely, I thought, readers would know there wasn't enough time for him to be evil on page 383.

I stared at this scene for a long time, trying to decide how to make it sting like it stung Gansey.

And because it was never actually about Glendower, it was always about Gansey, it comes to where he actually has to be:

He thought the thing he had to realize was that the quest wasn't the most important thing in his life.

He didn't realize that he still had yet to learn that the quest wasn't even REAL.

He is Robinson Crusoe discovering the footprint was his own all along.

YES HE IS BROKEN AND CRYING

BEING AN AUTHOR IS THE BEST JOB

NOW welcome to your actual arc, Gansey

YES CreepyAdamACTIVATE

Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit, says Ronan, but you know what, I wouldn't hold my breath for that

wait don't I have

hold on let me look in the back room a second I think I have a

"Let's not get carried away just because you tried to kill someone," Henry clarified.

Reading this Seondeok chapter reminds me of all the shaman stuff I read for it (only to get distilled into a single chapter) and then that further makes me think that if all my health stuff this last year means I'm a shaman now, that would make it worthwhile.

So if any of YOU guys have shamanic powers, would you nip into one of my dreams tonight and let me know if I have gifts now? Maybe not all of you at once, but just a few, especially if you could arrive in the shape of a cool bird or something?

"I intend to move independently into the business of luxury magical items, curating only the most extraordinary and otherworldly of crazy shit."

same, piper, same

The Dream Thieves:

The Raven King:

Ok, look, I really, REALLY know it's aggravating as hell but I love the ever living hell out of blindfolded Adam narrating this scene of hell.

"He's being unmade"

ANGST LEVEL 11

Adam arc in 3,2,....

Adam has to remember that he gets to choose, even if the two options look really similar. Horror and magic, right? His father or who he wants to be. The demon or Cabeswater.

Sigh.

I wrote this in a grocery store parking lot in a rare moment of lucidity at the end, having blown by multiple deadlines, and it was very autobiographical and futile and it feels a little raw to read it right now, to be honest.

"Is it safe?" Gansey asked.
"Safe as life," Adam replied.

can we get some mood music

Blue kissed him.

"Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she'd been told that she'd kill her true love."

Maybe the real Glendower was the Noah Czerny we met along the way.

"He quietly slid from time."